At the recent Zone of the Enders event, commemorating the forthcoming release of the HD edition, a new game was announced. This is the same game that’s been in pre-production for years but was held back on the grounds that Konami didn’t think it would make its money back (the first two games barely did and those had far smaller teams than this will need). Now that a veritable cluster fuck of marketing and game releases awaits, it seems that Konami are more keen to take a risk with a new game in the series. Bizarrely, the mecha design has taken a turn for the organic. In many ways the new Jehuty (shown rather gloomily above) is stylistically reminiscent of Takayuki Takeya’s work. Especially when you think of his gruesomely beautiful Lord of Byston Well sculpts. Thankfully, Hideo Kojima posted some better shots of the maquette here, here and here. The really bizarre thing is that the in-game models are actually being scanned off these real world maquettes, which is a pretty big snub to the art team really. The big thing for us though is that the whole pseudo-organic route has been done to death before. What made the original mecha designs so compelling were because nobody had ever designed mecha like that before. This feels a bit dull and safe by comparison. In addition to all this sequel excitement, the HD edition is indeed looking very lovely and a box set edition will also include a BluRay of the Idolo prequel OVA that was released way back with the first game. No word on release date or systems as yet and the game is currently being called the “Enders Project”. However, the HD edition will be finally released this year on October 25th.

It sucks, because I was kinda looking forward to how they would expand off of Naked Jehuty at the end of Second Runner. It remained consistent with the theme of things up to that point, and made the bulky, surrounded-with-technology Jehuty look more God like, and plausibly powerful.

This? I mean, yeah skulls are cool and all that, but what skull could that possibly belong to lodged on it’s chest like a necklace? I liked the antennae over the horns. This design seems to be a back-track to any variant of Jehuty I’ve seen. It IS metal…but it ain’t Jehuty. Hell, they should’ve painted this thing black and called it something completely different….what’s the Egyptian god for plague? Call it that!

Following that line of logic no one should paint portraits because Da Vinci did it best nor should anyone be allowed to make war movies after Full Metal Jacket.I’m as big of a fan of Shinkawa’s mechanical designs as much as the next guy but they weren’t the crux of the series,the gameplay was.With this is mind one would naturally have to concede that there still is a distinct lack of such abstract designs in the world but would also have to ask what wrong with him trying something else?Whats wrong with his personal spin on biological designs?

Well, I’ve never thought the gameplay of the ZOE games was particularly cogent or noteworthy. Only the designwork ever stood out for me. In any case, your comparison is flawed; we’re not talking about differences in disciplines but style within a discipline. Shinkawa created a new style for the orbital frames in ZOE and that was wonderful. This is just a middle of the road and pretty cynical change to the style of the designs (the fact that Kojima cited Hollywood comic book movies as an influence over Twitter is just plain tragic). It genuinely seems that Shinkawa has been reigned in on this game and I think that’s very sad indeed.

You say the gameplay is lacking and the aesthetics are what interested you,I say the gameplay is flawed but unique and the aesthetics are secondary to the overall experience.Its hard to be “wrong” with such opinions.

Son Of Chronos said on 25-05-2012

It looks like something Godzilla would fight. Like most of you I’m confused, and I’m not a Panzer Dragoon fan so I don’t get why it looks like that either.

I wonder if the game is going to end up being like Asura’s Wrath? I’m getting that vibe from monster x I mean Jehuty 😀

Just snipped this from G4’s article on the announcement:
We know that it is a direct sequel to The 2nd Runner and that the story unfolds against the backdrop of an ancient civilization (as opposed to the previous games’ futuristic world)

I’m with everyone else, I don’t know how to feel about the new design. I’ve never been against the organic mech look, but Shinkawas original designs for them was just really original and cool, cockpit and all.

In Idolo (and in the games) they reveal that metatron is actually sentient. Maybe this is a prequel that explains where it came from?
Could be that metatron is the remains of the race that this jehuty belonged to or something like that…

@Greg: We know the PS2 games sold badly on account of how the game’s played. This was not only shown in a questionnaire around the time of Anubis’ release but also corroborated by both games’ poor sales. So it’s not my opinion on why the games did badly. Subsequently, changing the art style is pretty pointless as that was the only thing the series did well. Interestingly, the recent toys and merchandise from the art have done incredibly well. So again that’s not my opinion at work either.

Yes, the original release of Anubis was quite rough and as you know was reworked and re-released for better quality.Secondly, poor sales isn’t always a mark of poor quality with Psychonauts being a good example.Third, there is a bit of a fallacy in you assessment of merchandise and its relationship with the art work.Considering there has never been much ZoE merch to by beyond nick knacks and garage kits couldn’t it possibly be the case that people will buy readily available merchandise not because of how mechanical or not mechanical it is but just because the like ZoE?

You’d be surprised how uninformed your average game consumer is.Beyond the stunt with ZoE being bundled with a demo of MGS2 I don’t remember there ever being a large western marketing push for the games in general.People buy what they know making raw sales again not exactly an accurate point of reference.